Ecumenical Protestants, American Orientalism, and Interfaith Dialogue, 1890-1968

This thesis examines the roots of ecumenical Protestant sympathies for Palestinian refugees and places their concern in the context of their evolving relations with Muslim and Arab Americans throughout the 20th century. Though ecumenical leaders expressed more pro-Palestinian and pro-Arab perspectives after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, how they came to those perspectives requires a look into how ecumenical missionaries and missionary-connected individuals were early critics of Orientalism. Anti-Zionist, or rather non-Zionist ecumenical Protestants, were just one vocal group within mainstream Protestantism. Most mainstream Protestants were not firmly in one camp or another. From the 1930s to the 1960s, another group of ecumenists became the face of Christian Zionism in the U.S., decades before the evangelical right took up that mantle. The ecumenical Protestant "mainline" was in decline by the 1960s, in part due to divisions among ecumenical leaders and especially between church leadership and the laity, including divisions over support for Israel. Analysis of published and unpublished primary sources from the Presbyterian Historical Society provides insight into the ways ecumenical leaders articulated their concerns over the Arab-Israeli conflict. This topic is significant because of the influence that transferred from ecumenical to evangelical Protestant hands in this realm of American diplomacy. Since the 1970s, evangelicals have cultivated the most diplomatic influence in U.S.-Israel relations. That development is a critical part of recognizing the consequences of American ecumenism’s decline and what it meant for American foreign policy and interfaith relations. Looking at the decline in that context also illuminates the ever-present role of religion in American foreign policy and how it has changed. This thesis argues that ecumenical Protestants responded to the Arab Palestinian refugee crisis in part by working to improve Arab and Muslim-Christian relations, an initiative that in some ways mirrored the ecumenical response to Jewish persecution. Those ecumenical efforts at interfaith understanding were rooted in the experiences of missionaries in Palestine and new 20th century ideas about ecumenism, the purpose of missions themselves, and American pluralism.